Aleksandra Liput’s current exhibition titled Heartworm raises questions about human illness, its role in the contemporary economic and social system, and its representation in folk beliefs. Disease is an extremely challenging, fear-invoking aspect of our lives. Since it is often hidden behind a white hospital curtain, we are left with no language or space in which to talk about it. In works inspired, among other things, by superstitions recalled from her childhood, Liput presents how defense mechanisms and beliefs about illness and health have changed over time.

In the past, illness was regarded as something that originated from outside, something over which we had no or very limited control. These beliefs separated illness from the body. It was thought that many ailments were caused by animals, especially worms, which penetrated people’s bodies and caused their health to deteriorate. The best example of this is the phrase that inspired the title of this exhibition: “a heartworm is moving inside me.” This phrase originates from southern Hungary and was used as a metaphor for nausea (quoted in Henryk Biegeleisen, Lecznictwo ludu polskiego [Traditional Folk Healing in Poland], Kraków 1929).

What particularly interests the artist is the fact that in ancient beliefs, responsibility for illness was removed from the afflicted person. This liberated them from the burden of guilt and from accusations of having been negligent towards their own bodies.

These reflections were inspired by the essay “Illness as Metaphor” by the American writer and critic Susan Sontag, which is one of the most famous and influential texts about the way society perceives illness, both physical and mental, and the consequences of such an approach for an ill person. Sontag, herself a cancer patient, observed that illnesses are often laden with social metaphors and symbols, and that their use can lead to irrational and damaging consequences, such as isolation and a feeling of guilt among sufferers for the conditions that afflict them. This burden also makes it difficult to understand the illness itself and leads to false assumptions about its causes and treatments. This important text challenges common beliefs and encourages a more empathetic and compassionate approach to individuals battling diseases.

In the present day, the moral right to be ill is granted solely to those who strictly adhere to established rules – eating healthily, exercising regularly, and avoiding stress. The responsibility placed on the individual is reinforced by the perpetuation of the myth that our health is in our own hands. Too rarely is it mentioned that one’s state of health and ability to take care of it are closely linked to one’s economic, social and even geopolitical status. According to Mark Fisher, a highly esteemed British writer, philosopher and cultural theorist, and the author of Capitalist Realism, the imperatives of late capitalism often focus on the sphere of health. Systemic norms, however, remove responsibility from fundamental structural problems such as living conditions, access to medicine, environmental pollution and high food prices. Health thus becomes a matter of individual choice over which a person has very little influence.

The Heartworm exhibition draws visually on folklore and rituals, using disturbing symbols and metaphors from ancient beliefs and superstitions. “Evil winds” (a term taken from Biegeleisen) bring a sick and weeping tree into the gallery with a disease grafted onto it that has been driven out of a person. From behind a thick curtain resembling unwashed bandages, evil eyes peek out at us. Worm-like ceramic organisms hide in the gallery’s nooks and crannies, and the only practical (but also magical) tool that can save us is a broom made of birch twigs.

The artist steers away from romanticizing folk beliefs, aware of their complex nature laden with paradoxes, both in contemporary and historical contexts. It is just as absurd to blame a neighbor for casting a spell and making us ill with their “evil eye” as it is to shift all responsibility for illness onto an individual who is living in the socio-economically imbalanced, polluted and hostile environment of our contemporary era.

— Mika Drozdowska